Encore albums are all the rage these days. Piers Lane scored a Recording of the Month accolade for his last year (I liked it too), and Mikhail Pletnev just released an album
of quick performances that preceded his recording sessions (avant-cores?).
Alexandre Tharaud’s album, like Lane’s, says a lot about his
temperament, his strengths, and his passions, and like Lane’s, it is
superb.

We begin and end with luminous transcriptions of Bach, the composer
who inspired what remains possibly Tharaud’s best album yet. In the
middle there’s Couperin’s Tic-Toc-Choc, which inspired a
previous Tharaud recording; Mompou, whom Tharaud has used as an encore
before; Scarlatti, to whom Tharaud has also devoted a full disc; and
Poulenc, whose chamber music he recorded, complete, for Naxos. If this is a
roundabout summary of his career so far - and if I wondered at times whether
the recordings were really new - that’s okay, mostly because
it’s so nice.

The Bach, as mentioned, is as achingly beautiful and expressive as
it was on the first CD, the Couperin as rambunctious as before, the Chopin
waltz as scintillating. What’s new is good too. Ignacio Cervantes, a
Caribbean composer, supplies Adios a Cuba, Sibelius’ Valse
triste makes a surprise appearance, and Tharaud turns out,
unsurprisingly, to be a gifted player of Grieg, too. Everybody who knows
Tharaud’s love for piano-fied baroque will be pleased by his
Gluck/Siloti ‘Dance of the blessed spirits,’ so pretty
it’s almost unfair. I just wish, as always with albums like these,
that that blasted Rachmaninov C sharp minor prelude could be given a rest.
Enough already.

Altogether this is a joy. Recorded sound is top-notch, too. I
can’t supply recording dates and information because Erato sent us a
review copy which consisted only of the CD and an envelope, but other
sources tell me that the booklet includes an interview with the pianist.